Our school system tell us that because our bodies are changing, we have to hide them, or at least that’s what Hillary Meeler told students and parents at the Morgan County Middle School parent orientation when she explained the school’s dress-code, which has rules that seem like they’re trying to make us feel like because we’re female and our bodies are developing, we have to hide them. It’s not okay to tell girls that because they’re starting to grow and their figure is starting to fill out that they have to hide their bodies. This ruins a young women’s body imagery. This is body shaming. 

Both the high-school and middle-school have the same dress-code which consists of some pretty unacceptable rules that have been angering students and parents alike, such as the rule that young women have to wear shorts down to three inches from the center of the knee (or an index card, per the Morgan County Board of Education) or sweatpants in PE in the Georgia summer heat, when they can’t buy girls shorts with an inseam that long.

Women’s basketball shorts typically have a 7” inseam, so many girls can’t find pairs with a long enough inseam to fit the dress-code, but when parents and students complain to the school system, the Morgan County Board of Education tells the young women to purchase boys basketball shorts. Young women shouldn’t be told to wear boy’s shorts or long pants (in over 100 degree heat) just because the school decided women shouldn’t be allowed to show their leg above their knee. They’re making the young women choose between risking a heatstroke from wearing pants in the summer heat and wearing boy’s clothing.

It’s incredibly sexist for the school to do this, especially when the cheerleaders and volleyball players can walk around the school during school hours in shorts and skirts so short that the outfits in themselves are inappropriate, and the girls volleyball shorts resemble a pair of black spandex underwear. The girls upper thighs and butt cheeks are always visible when the most other girls can only show are their knees. How are the people who allow those outfits in school the same people that say a girl can’t show anything above her knees? This is an injustice, but the injustice is more than just that.

In addition, with the rule being that shorts have to be within three inches of the center of the knee, short girls can purchase normal women’s shorts and have it be within dress-code when a taller girl can purchase the exact same pair of shorts in the same size and have it not be within dress-code on them due to the length of her legs. This is unfair discrimination against tall students.

We’re not asking for the dress-code to be removed or to be allowed to dress provocatively. All we’re asking for is a change, for all the students to be allowed to dress in sports shorts in PE perhaps with sliders underneath for modesty. In place of the shorts rule being length from the knees it should be inseam length because the current shorts dress code is unfair for many of the students given their height.